National STEM Learning Centre | Step 1.

3 Chaotic Lessons

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In my first lesson, I remember it very, very well. I had one of the worst experiences ever. I'd taken a job on a

council estate with real problems. I was surrounded by poverty, by low aspirations, and expectations that were

even lower.

My first lesson was with a group of 16-year-olds. And I made sure that I was really well prepared because people

had told me that if you have great lessons, you never have behaviour management problems, right? Perhaps if
your experienced. But me, as a young teacher, I was struggling even with the best resources.

I walked into this lesson expecting the students to immediately pay attention to me. And yet they ignored me

completely. They decided to send me to Coventry, to not speak to me at all. So I employed the only behaviour
management strategy that I knew.

I'm a big bloke. I've got a loud voice. So I started shouting. And when it didn't work, I started shouting louder. And
yet none of them even flickered. They just carried on playing their table football and climbing in and out of the
windows, which was kind of all right. We were on the ground floor. But you can see I wasn't very happy about it.

And I thought, where do I go now? I went to that lecture on behaviour management that I had as a student myself,
which was half an hour, sink or swim, see how you go, Paul. So I started shouting louder, and louder, and louder

at the point at which I'd shouted my loudest shout and loomed as large as I could over these students. One of
them turned to me, and out of the corner of his mouth whispered, we're not scared of you, sir.

And it stuck in my head. Well, you know because your students say similar things to you. And if you're a parent,

your children give you the same truths. And you can't shake them. We're not scared of you, sir.

Why did I think that fear was an intelligent way to manage the behaviour of students? That's what my teachers
had done to me. That's why I had come into teaching, to do something better. And yet here was I in a panic,

screaming my loudest shouts at the students and expecting them to play good poppy. It was totally unrealistic.

Suddenly out of nowhere children started coming back in through the windows. There were coats coming off, pens

being produced, books came from nowhere. And in 20 seconds, this group of 16-year-olds had transformed into

diligent scholars. I thought, was this me that I stumbled across some magic behaviour management phrase that

miraculously transformed them?

Had I finally shouted loud enough? And of course, it was nothing to do with me. There was a face at the window, a

math teacher, a colleague of mine called David. I swear to you those students had smelled him coming down the
corridor, not that he was a smelly man. But you understand.

One look, one look from the corridor and he transformed this group of 16-year-olds. I said to him, David, give me

that. I know my subject. The gap for me is this, the management of behaviour. It's taken me years to unwrap the

skills that David had and to learn for myself.

Of course, what he had wasn't pulled out from a book or drawn from a box of tricks. He had consistency that

allowed the students to trust him, built up over time. He had certainty. You knew with David that he would follow up

relentlessly, not aggressively. But he had a persistence that meant he would never let it lie.

And he had relationships, great relationships with young people, not just a flash in the pan, but those relationships

that sustain over years. We've all had those hellish first lessons. And we've all had those teachers that we'd have
to learn a great deal from. I wonder what your worst experience has been. I wonder what that lesson from hell is

for you.

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